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Foxstep's Guides/Naming Your Characters
Welcome to Foxey's Guide to name your characters! Here, we'll be going over a few tips to making successful names for your fanfictions and (if you want) OCs. Prefixes So let's start out with the base of the name. Something every kit starts with and has for the rest of their life, even in StarClan: A prefix. Now, sometimes queens name their kits based on their features. Perhaps their color? This could mean your character could be Blackkit, Silverkit, Graykit, Gingerkit, Bluekit (If they are blue-gray), Brownkit, and so on. It is probably not a good idea to do unrealistic names like Purplekit and Pinkkit. However, you can be smart about this. For example, if you've read Tallstar's Revenge, you would remember that Heatherstar is depicted a pinky-gray cat? That is realistic so if you were to name your cat Pink-something, it could be based on them being pinky-gray, you'd just have to pop that in, in the story, before your readers get stunned. Next, your character could also be named after defects. Now, this is somewhat cruel but it has happened before in the series. Like Crookedstar. If your cat has a broken spine, you could give them the prefix of Broken-. Or if they can't see, you could call them Blindeye, prefix blind. Or if you just don't want to do it based on appearance, you could pick an herb. Sage, Lavender, Rose, Thistle, etc. Look at Warriors Wiki for a full list. Try to avoid long prefixes because you have more to write/type and it would just sound weird. Another reasonable way of choosing prefixes is by naming the character after another deceased one, as in order to honor their memory. Kinda like Fernsong was named after Ferncloud to honor her. So if you were honoring a deceased cat called Berrywing, you could name a kit Berrykit even if the kit doesn't look like the cat being honored. Suffixes A name is like a story, somewhat. It has a beginning and an ending. Your beginning is chosen by your mom. Your ending is chosen by the Clan leader. In general, try not to use the suffixes -flower, -petal, -stream, -heart, -shine, -light, -leaf, -petal too much. Those can sometimes stir up a Mary sue name based on the prefixes. Like if the prefix was Sapphire, then you choose shine, you would get Sapphireshine. Which is a plain sue name. Try to use the regular Clan suffixes used throughout the books: -fur, -tail, -pelt, -shadow, -stripe; these ones are really neglected. You don't need to ALWAYS use those 5, it's also okay to use the sueish ones. Get creative. But try not to make your cats called Brightlight, Flowerheart, Poppyflower too much. You know something I do? I sometimes make a villainous character have a sueish name cause fans are supposed to hate them anyway.... :P Name Changes Now, what if your Clan Leader was supposed to be cruel. What if they hated the cat that was becoming a warrior? Now it probably wouldn't be JUST suffixes or prefixes that would be cruel, a Clan leader would possibly change the whole name. Kind of like how Bluestar changed Brightheart's name to Lostface. Or Whiteye's name became One-eye (in my opinion that name change is actually very unreasonable). Sort of like that. Some examples of a cruel name change would be: *Tornheart *Rottentail *Maggotheart *Mousebrain *Foxdung *Ripped-eye You name it. Sometimes, name changes can be for the better. If a cat is not happy with their birth name, they could always ask the leader to change their name. Naming your Hero Now most stories have a main character designed to be the hero, and in this case, authors want to make their hero stand out...which eventually leads on to Mary Sue/Gary Stu names. Let's keep in mind that the people who do change the world, don't have names such as Brave Spirit, etc. So your cat probably shouldn't have a name like Strongheart. Unless the Clan names their cats like that, it doesn't matter but if cats are usually called Birdpaw and Rabbitpaw, a Strongpaw would be a little out of the ordinary. An example would be Fireheart, hint hint. So try to settle with common prefixes but some special ones wouldn't be too bad if you didn't constantly use them, if you see what I mean. Thank You Thank you for reading this guide and I hope this helped you in many ways! Stay tuned for more guides! Category:Foxstep's Guides